Let's say you have 8 colors of logic wires

[bigyihsuan]

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, and white colored wire.
All combinators can use all 8 colors.

How complex do you guys think the combinator contraptions would get?

[Adil]

Honestly? Not higher then they currently are.

[DaveMcW]

The only reason we have 2 colors, is because combinators didn't exist and smart inserters needed more options.

Now that we have combinators 1 color is enough.

[vampiricdust]

With the way combinators work, 2 works. Anything more is not really helpful. What we need is more inputs and magic functions.

[Zhab]

Well 2 cable colors is nice to have to isolate sections. It is kinda vital when you start using complex combinator logic gate shenanigans and reuse signal left and right and need to prevent cross section signal interferences. I was always able to do everything I need to do with 2 colors and simpler builds are fine with 1 color. I guess that having 1 or 2 extra colors would occasional make life easier by allowing you to be sloppy with your cabling. But if anything that would make builds more simple rather than more complex.

8 colors ? Now that is crazy talk. I can't imagine a situation where this would be useful even if being sloppy and lazy on purpose.

With the way combinators work, 2 works. Anything more is not really helpful. What we need is more inputs and magic functions.

We have the same building blocks that real computers are made with available to us. As such, every functions are already possible. But to have a powerful combinator build you need a lot of combinators organized in a complex manner.

What "magic functions" and more inputs would do is allow more powerful results with simpler builds. Which is not something I'm particularly against. Would definitively make combinator use less space. But it would not make combinator builds more complex.

What would allow us to do things that are not currently possible is allowing us to connect and control more things to the circuit network and 0.13 update is planning to do just that. With more connectable/controllable things at our finger tips, combinators builds are likely to increase in complexity.

[DerivePi]

a multi wire would be helpful for connecting multiple outposts back to the main base. Other than that, I think complicated wired connections are beyond most Factorio players and for the experienced, they are fairly cumbersome.

[ratchetfreak]

a multi wire would be helpful for connecting multiple outposts back to the main base. Other than that, I think complicated wired connections are beyond most Factorio players and for the experienced, they are fairly cumbersome.

You can get multiple outpost data using a selector,

send the outpost ID on signal 0 and have each outpost use a decider to test against signal 0 = ID and output "each" input count send that output back to the main base.

[Zhab]

You can get multiple outpost data using a selector,

send the outpost ID on signal 0 and have each outpost use a decider to test against signal 0 = ID and output "each" input count send that output back to the main base.

Yes you can adapt real world shared medium networking protocols to send any signal from any local circuit to any other local circuit. I like to call that global network the internet.

[MF-]

Complex? Nah.

But think about the riddiculous power poles designed to hold 9 separate wires at a time.

[ssilk]

I think what would be a really good idea would be to have multiplexers in the game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplexer

It would be so easy, if we could connect to the internal time: Take "Time" modulo "Number of Wires" and both sides are synchronized. So: A programmable timer device would also do the job.

[ratchetfreak]

I think what would be a really good idea would be to have multiplexers in the game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplexer

It would be so easy, if we could connect to the internal time: Take "Time" modulo "Number of Wires" and both sides are synchronized. So: A programmable timer device would also do the job.

my tristate buffer design (simple a single decider with signal0 == ID and output everything input count) let's you create a 32bit address selector/mulitplexer

[ssilk]

Link?

[ratchetfreak]

Link?

described here